Finally, the voices of the Oyneg Shabes Archive will be heard.

No beautiful museum in the center of Jerusalem, no teams of dedicated scholars mining the scrolls for historical and spiritual information. And yet, the sacred texts that rose from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto remain largely silent and obscure. Indeed, to this day, almost no one knows about the Oyneg Shabes Archive or the remarkable man who created it, Emanuel Ringelblum.

Discovered in 1946 and 1950, the thousands of surviving documents of the Archive were housed in underfunded conditions in the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw for decades. Written in Yiddish and Polish and largely untranslated, the Archives remained largely unknown outside of academic circles. Only in 1990 was funding available to apply modern preservation techniques on the crumbling treasure. According to Peter Miller, writing a review of historian Samuel Kassow's 2007 seminal work on the Archive, Who Will Write Our History?, "During those long years, Ringelblum's Archive lay in the ground, or in restoration baths, or in closed cupboards, waiting, waiting, waiting." Finally, in 2007, Indiana University Press published Kassow's book and, according to Miller, Kassow is the first to give a picture of the whole project, and of its amazing chief protagonist. For all these reasons, this book—itself an act of historical rescue—is a work of tremendous significance.

In 2013, Indiana University Press and Professor Kassow agreed to option the rights to make a documentary film based on his book to filmmaker Roberta Grossman. Now, 70 years after the hasty burial of the Archives on the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the voices of the Oyneg Shabes Archive will finally be heard in the new feature-length documentary Who Will Write Our History.

Q: Why another film about the Holocaust?

A: This may well be the most important story about history that you will ever hear. It is the story of an extraordinary man and his research project in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. It is a tale about why history matters and why it is worth dying for. It's the story of Emanuel Ringelblum and [the Oyneg Shabes Archive], the astonishing secret archives of the Warsaw Ghetto that was his creation.

—Peter N. Miller review of Samuel Kassow's Who Will Write Our History in The New Republic, April 9th, 2008

Q: Why support this film?

A: Most documentaries about the Holocaust depend on interviews with survivors today. What the Oyneg Shabes Archive offers is of a completely different order—and no documentary has ever shown this story. This is as close as you can get to the very moment and very place that these materials document. Those who lived in the shadow of death—and then in the face of death—created these documents in the moment and on the spot. There is nothing to compare with such an extraordinary record, the result of those who risked their lives to document the tragedy, knowing that they might not survive but that they must ensure that the world will know what transpired.

—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Program Director of the Core Exhibition for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw

"There are two forms of resistance: armed resistance and unarmed resistance. Historian Emanuel Ringelblum led a group of intellectuals who risked their lives in a resistance mission to preserve Jewish memory in the face of total annihilation. Ringelblum may or may not have not believed in God, but he believed deeply in the Jewish people and in the importance of Jewish history."Yehuda Bauer, Yad Vashem

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You can be a part of bringing Who Will Write Our History to the screen with your donation. Any amount is welcome and every donor will receive credit on the website donor page. All donations of $180 or more will receive credit in the film.

Our Supporters Comment

“To see justice served by bringing Ringelblum's work public will be very powerful and is extremely important.”

Al BergAl and Gayle Berg Foundation

Our Supporters Comment

"We owe it to the courageous men and women of the Archive, who labored in real time to document and memorialize the life and death struggle of the largest Jewish community in Europe, to tell this story."

David RoskiesAuthor, editor, and scholar

Our Supporters Comment

“All of Roberta Grossman’s films are excellent, so we’re very excited to support her latest endeavor.Hurry and finish, so we can screen it at our festival!